A Hands-on Middle-School Robotics Software Program at MIT
Name
rms-paper.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
920.61 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
31b0f6f9f40836057af791a87f8f6dcf
Author(s)
Chen, Sabina
Fishberg, Andrew
Shimelis, Eyassu
Grimm, Joel
van Broekhoven, Scott
Shin, Robert
Karaman, Sertac
Date Issued
August 1, 2020
Journal
2020 9th IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference, ISEC 2020
Publisher
IEEE
Citation
Chen, Sabina, Fishberg, Andrew, Shimelis, Eyassu, Grimm, Joel, van Broekhoven, Scott et al. 2020. "A Hands-on Middle-School Robotics Software Program at MIT." 2020 9th IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference, ISEC 2020.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
© 2020 IEEE. Robotics competitions at the high school level attract a large number of students across the world. However, there is little emphasis on leveraging robotics to get middle school students excited about pursuing STEM education. In this paper, we describe a new program that targets middle school students in a local, four-week setting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It aims to excite students by teaching the very basics of computer vision and robotics. The students program mini car-like robots, equipped with state-of-The-Art computers, to navigate autonomously in a mock race track. We describe the hardware and software infrastructure that enables the program, the details of our curriculum, and the results of a short assessment. In addition, we describe four short programs, as well as a session where we teach high school teachers how to teach similar courses at their schools to their own students. The self-Assessment indicates that the students feel more confident in programming and robotics after leaving the program, which we hope will enable them to pursue STEM education and robotics initiatives at school.
MIT Department
Lincoln Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1109/isec49744.2020.9280694
